Taxi driver Mohammed Akram, 63, of Holker Street, Keighley, was found guilty of sexual activity with the first girl after offering her a lift.

The court heard there was no evidence he pressured the teenager to engage in sexual activity and he did not know the other men.

Khalid Raja Mahmood, 34, pleaded guilty to two charges of rape and three charges of sexual activity with a child.

Peter Hampton, prosecuting, said Mahmood raped the victim on two occasions. The girl submitted to sex at other times, often after Mahmood had plied her with alcohol and cannabis.

Mahmood is currently serving an eight-year jail sentence for raping a woman in a park in Keighley and trying to abduct a 10-year-old girl as she played on a scooter near her home, the court heard.

Judge Roger Thomas QC handed the men sentences of between three-and-a-half and 20 years detention, including an extended sentence for Mahmood.

He said: "You're all to be sentenced, all of you, for offences against a young vulnerable child.

"She was only 13 or 14 when the 12 of you took such terrible and heartless sexual advantage of her."

The judge said cases such as these were classed as child sexual exploitation.

He said: "This is a category of case which involves the sexual exploitation of usually young, vulnerable girls by groups of men who take advantage of a child for their own selfish, sexual gratification."

Kabir, who received the greatest jail term of 20 years, was also sentenced for 12 sexual offences against two other young girls after being found guilty at a separate trial.

Mr Hampton said the abuse took place over a period of two years when one girl was aged between six and seven and the other was aged between seven and nine.

Judge Thomas said all four victims had suffered "severe psychological harm".

The judge said: "None of these defendants had any concern for these girls. They were totally uninterested in their welfare and what damage they were causing them."

He added: "(The girl) clearly demanded pity and understanding but their view of her was heartless and demeaning. They saw her as a pathetic figure who had no worth and who served no other purpose than to be an object that they could sexually misuse and cast aside.

"They showed her no shred of decency or humanity when, as a vulnerable child, she so needed care and understanding."

Many of the men smiled, laughed, chatted and waved to family members in the public gallery as they were led away from the dock following sentencing.

Judge Thomas criticised them for their "appalling" attitude and behaviour throughout the trial, which he said was "contemptuous, disrespectful and arrogant on a scale that I have hardly seen before in many years of practice in the criminal law".

Helen Gaunt, a Crown Prosecution Service lawyer, said: "These 12 men are responsible for despicable crimes involving child sexual exploitation and abuse. Their victims were young, naive and vulnerable and were deliberately targeted."

She added: "This type of depravity will not be tolerated on our streets or in our communities."

Mark Burns-Williamson, West Yorkshire's police and crime commissioner, described the crimes as "abhorrent".

Re: 12 Men Jailed for Up to 20 Years After Sexual Exploitation of Teenage Schoo

Their "prophet" gives them their example. In one passage, a man tells Muhammed he married a matron, & Muhammed asks, "Why? Don't you like to play with the pre-pubescent girls, & don't you like them to play with you?"

Yeah, those "72 virgins" these guys look forward to are pre-pubescent girls. A good Muslim man is allowed those they've "inherited" –*i.e. their slaves, or the offspring of the infidel or the kauffir. Those little girls (& boys, but that's another story) are there strictly for pleasure. Their wives are for babies: both having & rearing. Little girls are for playing with.

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Re: 12 Men Jailed for Up to 20 Years After Sexual Exploitation of Teenage Schoo

It's not the first, (Rochdale, Rotherham) and I'm pretty certain it won't be the last. People say "oh well white people are paedophiles too, so why mention their race". Because white paedophiles don't do it so openly, in big local gangs, where everybody in their community knows, but don't say a word. And yes I know a paedophile is somebody who likes prepubescent children and these were young girls who had more than likely gone or started puberty, but according to Islam, a man can marry and have sex with her if she has started her periods, even if she is 9. They think that makes it alright. They're still paedos in my eyes.

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